OFDM is a data transmission scheme where the data is split into smaller streams and each stream is transmitted using a sub-carrier with a smaller bandwidth than the total available transmission bandwidth. The efficiency of OFDM is a result of the fact that the sub-carriers are selected so that they are orthogonal to each other. In other words, the sub-carriers do not interfere with each other while each is carrying a portion of the total user data.
There are practical reasons why OFDM may be preferred over other transmission schemes such as Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA). When the user data is split into streams carried by different sub-carriers, the effective data rate on each sub-carrier is less than the total data rate. Therefore, the symbol duration is much larger. Large symbol duration can tolerate larger delay spreads. In other words, data that is transmitted with a large symbol duration is not affected by multipath as severely as symbols with a shorter duration. OFDM symbols can tolerate delay spreads that are typical in wireless communications and do not require complicated receiver designs to recover from multipath delay.
MIMO is a wireless transmission and reception scheme where both the transmitter and receiver employ more than one antenna for transmission and reception. A MIMO system takes advantage of the spatial diversity or spatial multiplexing options created by the presence of multiple antennas and improves signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and increases throughput.
In OFDM-MIMO systems, training sequence design as well as efficient channel estimation algorithm remains a challenge if different training sequence signals are transmitted from different antennas simultaneously. Several approaches based on training tones have been attempted in prior art systems. As a result, the channel estimation has to be done in the frequency domain, resulting in increased complexity and degraded performance. Other known solutions of a time orthogonal pre-amble scheme can be implemented, but this is at the expense of increased overhead.